Tag: Genealogy

Allegedly the Family Forest® fails Wikipedia’s Notability test. Doesn’t it seem that a system of digital links which can generate tens of billions of pages of high quality ancestral history charts, ebooks, and reports should be considered notable, and a system of digital links which can map out a larger portion of the early ancestral pathways than they can see anywhere else for at least one out of three people on the planet should be considered notable?

A generally anonymous user at Wikipedia instigated a deletion of the Family Forest® page which had been up since January of 2007 at Wikipedia, and it feels like a malicious attack. So why now and what was the motivation?

What was the real agenda of this person? It appears that he or she doesn’t know what the Family Forest® is, but was sure that it doesn’t deserve recognition. Or could he or she have known what the Family Forest® is, and was carrying out sabotage orders?

Allegedly the Family Forest® fails Wikipedia’s Notability test. Doesn’t it seem that a system of digital links which can generate tens of billions of pages of high quality ancestral history charts, ebooks, and reports should be considered notable, and a system of digital links which can map out a larger portion of the early ancestral pathways than they can see anywhere else for at least one out of three people on the planet should be considered notable?

In the deletion discussion (which I did not know was going on at the time) I was dismissed as just a genealogy hobbyist. On a typical day now, I can substantially improve the assembled ancestry of tens of millions of living people. This is possible only with the proprietary digital resource (the Family Forest®) I have spent tens of thousands of hours developing.

Someone who has spent 40 to 80 hours per week almost every week for 16 years digitally indexing human history in lineage-linked format should not be dismissed as just a hobbyist.

One of our investors recommends legal counsel (and possible action) to find out if this anonymous, mean-spirited, and unfounded attack, and Wikipedia’s decision to delete the entry without bothering to make any notification to either the individual who wrote and updated annually the entry on the Family Forest®, nor to the company, which is easily contacted from the FamilyForest.com website, is actionable in a court of law as it is quite damaging to the company, scurrilous, and possibly backed by some would be competitor seeking a corporate advantage.

We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to counterattack. There’s a lot I like about Wikipedia, and I have trouble believing that most of the people behind Wikipedia would sanction the wrong that was done to us.

So here is an offer I presented to Wikimedia last week for a win-win solution. If they will reexamine the Family Forest deletion decision, for the next 120 days they can make the following available at Wikipedia.

Exploring this one huge eBook should convince almost anyone that this one title by itself is notable. Since it is like but one grain of sand on the beach compared to all of the titles the Family Forest® can generate, it should be obvious that the Family Forest® should easily pass Wikipedia’s Notability test.

We are still waiting for Wikimedia to respond to our offer. If they have not accepted by the end of this week, we will offer it to the American Red Cross instead.

For a wealth of free history lessons for you or your children, here’s the simple search formula. Google “Family Forest” + __________ = engaging stories from A People-Centered Approach To History®.

For a wealth of free history lessons for you or your children, here’s the simple search formula. Google “Family Forest” + __________ = engaging stories from A People-Centered Approach To History®.

Of course we believe that these stories are much more fun and enriching if you have full access to the Family Forest® National Treasure to follow the curiosity these stories are sure to generate, but these stories are great history starters on their own.

For instance, if you are looking for stories about a history event, like the 4th of July, try Googling “Family Forest” (in quotes) + signer. Or substitute in place of signer a word or phrase such as american revolution, or declaration, or independence, or tea party, or ticonderoga, or inventor.

Other history event suggestions are “Family Forest” (in quotes) + alamo, civil war, gettysburg, world war, world war II, pearl harbor, or flight.

As you can see in the previous examples, you can search for specific places. Try Googling “Family Forest” (in quotes) + a place such as hawaii, hi, texas, tx (or any of the other state names or their two-digit postal abbreviation), america, england, ireland, rome (or many other country names), jamestown, plymouth, big bear, boston, or many other key American and European cities.

In honor of the official State Holiday, for King Kamehameha Day 2011 we will give away a free National Treasure download to the first ten of King Kamehameha’s descendants from the kinship report who email us.

While you and your family are enjoying your tropical vacation here in Hawaii, there is a very good chance that you will see, or even meet, an actual descendant of King Kamehameha the Great.

Two centuries after he boldly united the Hawaiian Islands, according to recorded history his descendants have become quite numerous, and have now spread throughout the population here in Hawaii and elsewhere.

In honor of the official State Holiday, for King Kamehameha Day 2011 we will give away a free National Treasure download to the first ten of King Kamehameha’s descendants from the kinship report who email us.

It’s sad when a television star who was so prominent in ones childhood passes. With the passing of James Arness, it was doubly sad for me.
Do you ever have a particular thought that whenever it pops to mind, an associated thought, sometimes seemingly unrelated, pops to mind with it? I have one that’s always triggered by Gunsmoke. It is memories of my Grandma Harrison. She appears to have been conscious of and knowledgeable about her family heritage. I wonder, from a Family Forest® perspective, would she have been surprised to learn that I now have her networked through generation-by-generation family ties to the Hollywood star who she welcomed into her living room as Marshall Matt Dillon for twenty years?

It’s sad when a television star who was so prominent in ones childhood passes. With the passing of James Arness, it was doubly sad for me.

Do you ever have a particular thought that whenever it pops to mind, an associated thought, sometimes seemingly unrelated, pops to mind with it? I have one that’s always triggered by Gunsmoke. It is memories of my Grandma Harrison.

I remember fondly when I was a kid, for many reasons, it was always a treat to get to spend the weekend at Grandma’s. In addition to having more root beer, M&Ms, and Hershey kisses than I would ever get at home, one of my favorite reasons was getting to stay up late and watch Gunsmoke with Grandma.

So for me, the sadness of James Arness’s death was accompanied by the sadness of missing Grandma, and wondering about the answers to questions I never asked her.

What did she know about her family heritage? Her unfeminine middle name of Bryant appears to be a surname. Where did it come from? At least one of her children has a middle name that is known to be one of our family surnames. What about a couple of her other children? Where did their surname-sounding middle names come from?

She appears to have been conscious of and knowledgeable about her family heritage. I wonder, from a Family Forest® perspective, would she have been surprised to learn that I now have her networked through generation-by-generation family ties to the Hollywood star who she welcomed into her living room as Marshall Matt Dillon for twenty years? I wish I could tell her.

The Family Forest® has not yet found a reliable connection between the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star and the current British monarcy, but a Family Forest® kinship report last night for Johnny Depp did find some of his much closer famous relatives.

Two suspicious articles just appeared about Johnny Depp and Queen Elizabeth II being very distantly related.

One article calls them “cousins, 20 times removed.” This seems very unlikey, because to become any degree of cousins 20 times removed of anyone living at the same time requires the closest ancestral connection between the two to be at least thousands of years ago.

They are also called 20th cousins by “relying upon an unreported but widely known marriage in the 1600s” in another article. It is impossible to become 20th cousins of anyone within that relatively short time span.

The Family Forest® has not yet found a reliable connection between the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star and the current British monarcy, but a Family Forest® kinship report last night for Johnny Depp did find some of his much closer famous relatives.

Hon. Wellington R. Burt, a large timber baron in Michigan, died in 1919 and left his fortune to his family. Nothing unusual about that. But one condition stipulated in the will brought this large legacy into the news in 2011.

There was an interesting story this week about one of the most unusual wills in American history. It appears that about a century ago, one of the richest men in America must have been very upset with his immediate family.

Wellington Burt’s fortune was not to be distributed to his family heirs until 21 years after all of his grandchildren who were living in 1919 had died. That condition has just been met, and the $100 to $110 million legacy is about to be released.

You may be surprised to see who has family ties to this history book event. Within the 25,000 plus relatives in the Family Forest kinship report (see question number ten) of Hon. Wellington R. Burt are a number of instantly recognizable names.

The part I like best is watching Lionel’s delight while giving his children the gift of knowledge about some of their own ancestral heritage.

I also like knowing that there is so much more to the story waiting for Lionel’s family.

One of my top two favorite episodes so far this season on ABC’s Who Do you Think You Are?

The part I like best is watching Lionel’s delight while giving his children the gift of knowledge about some of their own ancestral heritage.

I also like knowing that there is so much more to the story waiting for Lionel’s family.

I wonder how they will react when they discover that, according to recorded history, they are almost certainly descended from royalty and they actually share ancestors with recent WDYTYA subject Tim McGraw?

The program tells us that Lionel’s ancestor John Louis Brown was almost certainly either the son, or the grandson, of Dr. Morgan Brown. Dr. Brown is descended from Sir Anthony Browne, Viscount Montagu.

You will also see another see another ancestral pathway leading to Longshanks through one of his granddaughters, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent.

If you ask for a 20-generation descendant view of Viscount Montagu, you will see some lines of descent to some famous cousins of Lionel, including President FDR, Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau, Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards, Queen Elizabeth II, Sarah Ferguson, Cary Elwes, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, and “The Thornbirds” star Rachel Ward.

If Lionel’s ancestor John Louis Brown was the son of Dr. Morgan Brown, you can click on Dr. Brown’s wife Elizabeth Little (PIN 282063 in the Family Forest National Treasure and ask for a twenty generation ancestor view. You will see her generation-by-generation ancestral pathway leading to Robert I, King of Scotland (also portrayed in Braveheart).

If you like Who Do you Think You Are?, you will enjoy visually exploring the National Treasure to see what we mean when we say that the Family Forest Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™.

The Family Forest® is now capable of generating a huge number of relationship charts connecting Tim and his children through common ancestors to most of the key people, places, and events in human history,…

This is another worthwhile and well-done episode from the team that creates the Who Do you Think You Are? program on NBC.

My favorite part is seeing how proudly people react to discovering and sharing with relatives that they have actual family ties to historical places, historical events, and real historical figures, and in this case, to two of Tim’s heroes.

It was interesting watching the story unfold leading up to being able to tell Tim that his hero George Washington knew Tim’s ancestors, and another one of Tim’s ancestors came to America with one of Elvis’ ancestors.

I wonder how Tim and his family will react when they discover that, according to recorded history, they actually share ancestors with George Washington, Elvis Presley, General Patton, Reese Witherspoon, and many other well-known people?

The Family Forest® is now capable of generating a huge number of relationship charts connecting Tim and his children through common ancestors to most of the key people, places, and events in human history, as well as to many of Tim’s entertainment collegues, and probably even more importantly, to Tim’s fans and potential fans.

While we’ll never know the answer to that, we do know something else for certain. History pivots on small events, including the kindness of a stranger.

A new Family Forest® customer wrote “Actually, I had no idea about that. Thank you so much! That’s fabulous! Most of my information is from census records and marriage records, which, as you know, are quite impersonal. I will definitely have to check out that book.”

With two of his brothers and their father, young Samuel Boyd was in a skirmish in South Carolina in the American Revolution. He was left for dead after a musket ball passed through his temple and took out his right eye. An old colored woman found him and took care of him until he was able to get away.

He did not have any children at the time, but after surviving a shot to the head, he went on to become an early pioneer settler in Kentucky and father of a large family of children who became the ancestors of many living people today.

What if that kind old colored woman had not befriended Samuel at that critical time? Would his descendants have never been born? Or would they have been born as someone else?

While we’ll never know the answer to that, we do know something else for certain. History pivots on small events, including the kindness of a stranger.

The story about Samuel’s pivotal Revolutionary event and his ensuing full life begins on page 121 in the 1892 Autobiography and Sermons of Elder Elijah Martindale by Belle Stanford.